


wait (I’m on my way)

by viverella



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Cooking, Food, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Hair Dyeing, Light Angst, M/M, Pining, Post-High School, aka osamu has two love languages: let me cook for u and wanna dye my hair, idiots to lovers, the inherent intimacy of playing with someone’s hair
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:20:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28249770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viverella/pseuds/viverella
Summary: It starts and ends, oddly enough, with the promise of lunch and a little bit of hair dye. The rest, as they say, is just details.(OR: a couple years after graduating from high school, Suna’s still pining, but he’s gotten better about it, quieter. It doesn’t make it any easier.)
Relationships: Miya Osamu/Suna Rintarou
Comments: 50
Kudos: 313
Collections: My favorite haikyuu fics, SunaOsa





	wait (I’m on my way)

**Author's Note:**

> I'm just getting my feet wet, she said. this will be short and sweet, she said. LIKE A LIAR. (I'm she)
> 
> I have no excuses for this except that I've got a particularly bad case of sunaosa brainrot these days, and what started out as a self-indulgent way to use some of the useless knowledge I have about diy hair dyeing from several years of doing my own hair quickly spiraled out of control and here we are. 13k words later. completely off topic. /head in hands
> 
> also full disclosure I have no idea where or how this fits into the timeline of things re: canon and idk if it's realistic at all that osamu would already be running onigiri miya at this point but this was all necessary for Plot™ reasons so you'll have to bear with me 
> 
> enjoy!!

_“The border is longing; when both have fallen in love but still haven’t said anything. The border is to be on the way. It is the way that is the most important thing.”_ —Tove Jansson

It’s not exactly what Suna had in mind when he’d decided to spend an off-season weekend devoid of extra practices back home, but Osamu promised to make him lunch, so at least there’s that. And if Suna’s honest with himself, he really does feel a little guilty for letting so much time pass in an endless shuffle of _can’t tonight, busy_ and _rain check, okay?_ and _next time, I swear_ , so there’s that, too. Suna wants to say that it’s not his fault, that it could’ve happened to anyone, but he also knows that when he’d graduated from high school a couple years ago, everyone told him he was lucky, that he’d gotten all his wildest hopes and dreams fulfilled, and yet he still could never shake the fact that it was all soured, just a little bit, by the fact that he was moving away with something a little like a broken heart (except he doesn’t know if a person can say that, if they never got a chance to give their heart away to someone in the first place). Suna remembers thinking when Osamu had texted him earlier in the week saying that he’d heard Suna would be in town and would he like to come over that it had maybe ended up not being worth the effort after all, this weird game of chicken he’s playing with his own feelings, pretending like if he just forcibly pushes it all to the periphery of his life, he’ll eventually learn to let it all go. He remembers thinking, too, that if the excited jolt that ran just under his skin at the mere mention of hanging out again after so long was any indication, he was probably stupid for thinking that things could ever be so easy. That maybe he would’ve always found himself in Osamu’s tiny, poorly ventilated bathroom breathing in chemical fumes he knows will probably take years off of his life wondering how it’s possible that after knowing Osamu for more than five years, he still hasn’t quite learned how to say no to him. 

“Can’t you pay someone to do this?” Suna asks, peering warily at what Osamu is mixing in a small plastic bowl. A fine blue powder is dissolving quickly into a milky solution poured from a bottle that reads _30 VOL DEVELOPER_. Suna wonders if he should be concerned that it makes his eyes water or that he’s inexplicably being entrusted with something that claims to lighten hair by at least three shades even though he has no idea what he’s doing. 

Osamu shrugs. “Some of us are rapidly spiraling into debt trying to get our onigiri business off the ground,” he says, sounding nowhere near as concerned as a statement like that should maybe require. “Have a little sympathy. And anyway, I’d make Tsumu do it like always, but he lives in Osaka now, so.”

Suna gives him a withering look. “I live in Hiroshima,” he deadpans. 

Osamu blinks slowly at him, almost irritatingly unbothered. “Yeah, well, you’re here now, aren’t you?” he says, holding out the plastic bowl for Suna to take. 

Suna heaves a sigh and tries not to fixate on the sentence too much. _Yeah, well, you’re here now, aren’t you?_ like that’s all it would’ve taken, all this time, if Suna had let it.

“You know,” Suna says flatly, even as he reaches to take the bowl of bleach from Osamu, “In some cultures, it’s considered rude to put a guest to work the moment they arrive.”

Osamu hums. “You might want to wear gloves,” he says, very pointedly ignoring Suna’s comment. 

Suna makes a show of rolling his eyes but does as he’s told. “Don’t come crying to me if this ends up looking like shit,” he grumbles, taking a small brush that Osamu’s offering him and waiting for Osamu to get settled onto the chair he dragged in from his kitchen table. 

Osamu laughs. “Can’t be any worse than the first time we tried to dye our hair,” he says.

Suna presses his lips together and tries not to smile, trying to imagine little middle school aged Osamu getting bleach everywhere trying to make himself a little different, and Suna thinks to himself that he’d probably give anything to have seen that. He makes a mental note to ask Osamu’s mother about it if he ever finds himself at their house again. She’s always seemed like the type of person to take all sorts of embarrassing pictures of her children. 

As he dips the end of the brush into the bowl of bleach and sets to work on Osamu’s hair, Suna can feel Osamu watching him through the bathroom mirror, thoughtful eyes carefully minding Suna’s every movement, and it should maybe bother him, being scrutinized so closely over something he didn’t quite choose to do, but Suna finds that he doesn’t mind. It reminds Suna a little of those moments, every now and again, when he’d catch Osamu watching him during spiking drills, pensive and quiet, like there was something important he had to figure out. Osamu has never said what it was about and Suna always chalked it up to his odd spiking form, but either way, he hadn’t really minded it then, either, being seen like that. If he’s honest with himself, Suna thinks, maybe that’s when it all started, this little crush he’s harbored like a thorn wedged between his ribs, this feeling in his chest that he’d thought would fade, given the time and distance, but Suna lives hundreds of miles away now and it’s been more than two years since he graduated from high school, a little less than a year since the last time he spent any significant amount of time with Osamu, and it’s like it never left, not completely. 

Osamu’s smile when Suna stops some minutes later and takes half a step back to inspect his work is small but pleased, the one that just barely tugs at the corner of his mouth like it’s a secret. It’s a smile that Suna remembers seeing for the first time back in high school during their first year when he’d taken a dig at Atsumu for getting on his nerves during practice, a smile that Suna remembers seeing and thinking that _this_ Miya, he could probably learn to get along with. 

(He’s learned by now that they’re a package deal, of course, but he hopes he’ll be forgiven for playing favorites sometimes, just a little bit.)

Osamu stretches his arms over his head and rolls his head back and forth, shaking off the stiffness that’s set in from being so still for so long. “What do you want for lunch?” he asks, standing and already halfway out the door. “I’m starving.”

Suna shrugs and stares down at the plastic bowl in his hands. “Surprise me,” he says, and he hears Osamu laugh softly and say something about leftovers that need to be eaten and _don’t you dare accuse me of cheating my way out of making you lunch, Suna, food is food_. Suna smiles a little to himself and goes to rinse out the bowl in the sink. 

By the time he wanders out to Osamu’s kitchen, there’s onions and garlic simmering at the bottom of a pan, filling the apartment with savory smells. Osamu’s rooting around in his fridge, pulling out leftover rice and chicken and a few eggs, humming quietly to himself like he always does when he cooks. Suna hoists himself up onto the kitchen counter, watching with mild interest as Osamu tosses all of the absentmindedly chosen ingredients into the pan. It feels oddly nostalgic, finding himself like this again. He remembers perching himself on the kitchen counter at the Miya residence so many times just like this, handing Osamu ingredients and watching him cook when it was his turn to prepare dinner for the night, having been banned from doing anything else to help after accidentally starting a small grease fire with Atsumu one time during their first year. How easy, Suna thinks idly, to find himself slipping back into their old patterns. Like it’s always been. Like he never left. He kicks a foot out to nudge Osamu’s thigh. 

“How do you know when it’s done?” Suna asks, eyeing Osamu’s hair. His roots are slowly turning a brassy yellow. 

“When my scalp starts tingling,” Osamu says vaguely, nudging at the rice sizzling in the pan. “But before it starts hurting.”

Suna snorts. “Yeah, that sounds really safe,” he says, which earns him a laugh. 

Osamu disappears to the bathroom again a handful of minutes later, entrusting Suna with the very important duty of making sure their lunch doesn’t burn, and when he returns, hair damp but bleach-free, he looks ridiculous. It’s apparently a multi-step process, getting hair from black to a silvery-grey, and Osamu’s roots are bright blonde against the muted tone of the rest of his hair. Osamu frowns when Suna bursts out laughing, frowns even more when Suna whips out his phone to snap a few quick pictures, but he only tries maybe half as hard as he could when he grabs at Suna’s phone to try to delete them. Osamu’s fingertips graze Suna’s wrist as Suna holds his phone just out of reach, and Suna pretends like it doesn’t still make his heart jump in his chest like he’s still fifteen and stupid and falling way too far way too fast for someone who was never going to give him the time of day. 

_Old habits_ , Suna thinks and remembers why he didn’t try to push it when the days turned into weeks turned into months after high school and he saw Osamu less and less.  
  


* * *

  
“Hey, Suna.”

There’s a voice from somewhere behind him that he only half-hears over the music playing through his headphones as he wanders around a familiar arena, killing time before a warm-ups for a pre-season match. He has half a mind to ignore it because he can’t be bothered to entertain reporters or fans before he plays, but then it comes again. 

“ _Hey_ , Sunarin.”

It startles him, something seizing in his chest as he turns, yanking his headphones out of his ears. There are only two people in the entire world who call him that, and Suna knows for a fact that one of them has his own match to attend hours away in Tokyo. He finds Osamu smiling at him, one eyebrow raised in mild amusement, dressed in a black t-shirt and cap emblazoned with his shop’s logo, apron tied around his waist. 

_Here for work, then_ , Suna thinks and ignores the way it threatens to knock him off balance. 

“Too good for us mere mortals now that you’re rich and famous?” Osamu says. 

Suna rolls his eyes. “What are you doing here?” he asks, mostly just to ask. The last time he saw Osamu at a match was around the end of last season, looking harried but in his element, trying to run his little booth all on his own. 

“Permits finally came in,” Osamu says, the teasing lilt from earlier giving way to something warm and genuine. “You’re looking at the newest regular vendor at V.League events. Can’t avoid me now.”

Suna lets out a huff of a breath. “I wasn’t—,” he starts to say and then thinks better of it. Suna hasn’t been avoiding him again, per se, but he also hasn’t been _not_ avoiding him either and it’s been a month now since that afternoon he spent in Osamu’s apartment fussing with his hair, chest aching and cheeks hurting from laughing so much. He takes a breath and tries again, “Congrats. Guess the pop-up last season went well.”

Osamu hums. “Must’ve,” he says easily, and then holds out a bag for Suna to take. 

Suna blinks. He hadn’t even noticed. 

“Speaking of,” Osamu says, “This is for you.”

The bag, Suna finds when he takes it and peers inside, is filled with what must be at least a dozen onigiri individually wrapped in plastic, each decorated just a little differently than the rest with bits of seaweed. Suna looks back up at Osamu with raised eyebrows. 

“I can’t eat all of this,” he says, which makes Osamu laugh.

“Share with your teammates or something then. I don’t really care,” Osamu says, waving a hand dismissively. He gestures vaguely to the bag. “The ones with the red stickers are new stuff I’m trying out. Let me know which ones you like. I’m trying to decide what to add to the menu.”

Suna blinks. “You’re asking for _my_ opinion?” he asks dubiously. “I seem to remember you throwing a fit in high school over the idea that I’m the type of person who only eats for sustenance.” 

Osamu pins Suna with a look. “Yeah, because that’s insane,” he says, managing to keep his expression straight for an impressive thirty seconds before it softens again. He shrugs, crossing his arms and looking away. “I just want to know what you think.”

There’s something soft and earnest about the way Osamu says it, something that makes Suna draw in a sharp breath, feeling a little like he’s been punched in the gut. It’s unfair, Suna thinks, that Osamu can still do this to him, even after they’ve known each other for so long, even after Suna’s resigned himself to the fact that maybe this whole thing will always be just a little sad. 

“Alright, fine,” Suna says, sounding more exasperated than he really feels, but it makes Osamu look at him again and smile. 

From somewhere behind Suna, another voice calls out to him. _Team meeting_ , Washio says, inclining his head towards the locker rooms, and Suna promises to be there in a minute. Suna turns to say goodbye to Osamu for now, but finds that the words get stuck in his throat. He wonders how long he’d mean this time, if he said it, and almost doesn’t want to find out. 

“Good luck,” Osamu says, saving Suna from having to figure out what the right thing to say is. 

Suna pulls the corner of his mouth up into a smirk. Familiar territory.

“I don’t believe in luck,” he says. 

“Right,” Osamu says, amusement evident in his eyes. “Well, then, work hard out there.”

Suna thinks of high school and getting scolded by Kita for slacking off and the knowing looks he’d exchange with Osamu, like they were daring each other to see who could get away with more before being on the receiving end of that sharp stare again. He shakes his head, smiling. 

“Yeah, yeah,” he says, waving Osamu off, and as he retreats to the lockers to meet up with the rest of his team, all he can hear is Osamu’s laughter in his ears.  
  


* * *

  
In October, when the twins’ birthday rolls around, it’s unseasonably hot. Suna finds himself in a trendy, crowded bar on a Saturday night trying not to get jostled as he waits with some of the other guys from the old team for their guests of honor to arrive. They’re late, which isn’t really new, but it _is_ their birthday, and it surprises Suna a little bit that at least Atsumu didn’t show up in a more timely manner to soak in every moment of adoration he can, but Suna’s used to waiting. He’s good at it, even, when he wants to be. He’s had a lot of practice. 

Suna’s pulled out of his thoughts by someone pressing a beer into his hand, and when he looks up, he finds Osamu smiling at him, that crooked quirk of his mouth, as he leans against the table they’ve staked out for the night. He’s still wearing his shirt from work, simple and black with a tiny onigiri on the left side of the chest, but the set of his shoulders is relaxed and easy like he doesn’t mind that he had to work a full day on his birthday. 

“Hey,” Osamu says, just over the din of the packed room around them.

Suna feels the corner of his mouth turning up, just a touch. “Hey,” he says. The beer Osamu’s handed him is cold against the warm skin of his palm. “Happy birthday.”

“Thanks,” Osamu says and then turns to peer over at the bar, where Atsumu’s lingering with Ginjima and Aran. The smile pulling at Osamu’s mouth has turned wry. “Not that you’d know it talking to him.”

Suna follows Osamu’s gaze. It looks like Atsumu’s trying to convince Aran to cover his drinks for the night, insisting that he deserves this because it’s his birthday, his, his, _his_ , and Suna tips his head to one side to smirk at Osamu. 

“Well, to be fair, it was his birthday first,” Suna says, which earns him a playful kick under the table. 

“Traitor,” Osamu says, but he doesn’t look too put out. 

Suna takes a sip of his beer in an effort to keep from smiling too widely. It only sort of works. 

“Suna!” Atsumu cheers as he approaches the table, slinging an arm Suna’s shoulders. He grins. “You gonna wish me a happy birthday?”

Suna pushes Atsumu off of him with maybe a little more force than is strictly necessary. “Ew, no,” he says, mostly just to be difficult. 

Atsumu gasps, and then after a moment, narrows his eyes. He looks back and forth between Osamu and Suna for a moment before his gaze lands firmly on Osamu and he asks, accusatory and sharp, “Did he wish _you_ a happy birthday?”

Suna feels a sudden spike of adrenaline shoot up his spine, like he’s been caught red-handed even though he hasn’t done anything in particular. _Shit_ , he thinks, but Osamu’s already shrugging casually and trying (poorly) to hide a smirk behind his glass. 

“Yeah, ’cause I’m not a total shithead,” Osamu says.

At that, Atsumu’s eyes widen, and he slams his palms down on the table. Suna takes half a step away to avoid getting beer sloshed on his shirt. For about half a second, Suna flashes back to high school again and the somehow familiar scene of the two of them getting into all-out fistfights in the middle of the gym, but before they can get too carried away, they both get smacked upside the head. Aran pins them both with a long stare that screams _try me_ , and the fight leaves both of them instantly. 

“ _Ow_ ,” Osamu complains as Atsumu whines, “Aran-kun, don’t be a killjoy” but they’re both more bark than bite at this point, and Kita shows up a moment later and the two shape up the rest of the way. It’s kind of amazing, Suna thinks, the effect that one person can have on another, and then tries not to think about it anymore when Osamu’s shoulder bumps his as he steps aside to make some more room at the table for Kita. 

Suna ends up feeling too warm the rest of the time they’re there and blames it on the packed room, letting Osamu crowd up against him and pass him drinks all night and laugh in his ear as they crack jokes with their friends and everyone hassles the twins a little more than usual because birthdays are birthdays, after all. There’s a moment, maybe four or five beers in, when Suna looks at Osamu out of the corner of his eye and catches him laughing at something someone said, mouth pulled into a wide grin, eyes crinkling around the corners. His hair is a little tousled from the way he keeps shoving his hand through it, and his cheeks are flushed from the stuffy room and the many drinks they’ve had, and Suna has to excuse himself for a moment because he’s afraid that if he doesn’t, he’ll do something stupid, like blurt out the fact that he’s been in love with Osamu since he was fifteen years old, tongue loosened by alcohol and the late hour. Suna mumbles something about needing a breath of fresh air, and when he returns, he settles himself between Ginjima and Kosaku instead. It’s all an illusion, Suna knows, the way distance makes him feel a bit safer, but for tonight, that’s just fine. 

As they’re all getting ready to go home for the night a couple hours later, Osamu finds him again, catching him by the wrist, a feather-light touch before his hand falls away. Suna’s skin burns like he’s been branded anyways. 

“You staying with your folks?” Osamu asks.

Suna hums and offers a tired smile. “Got a lovely thirty-minute train ride waiting for me,” he says, all fake cheer. 

Osamu laughs. “You know,” he says, “You’re always welcome to stay at my place when you’re in town. I live just a ten-minute walk from here.”

Suna lets out a laugh that feels thick in his throat, but he’s gotten very good at pretending like it doesn’t and says easily, “Yeah, you know, somehow, when I’ve got a proper bed waiting for me at home, sleeping on your shitty couch just isn’t that appealing.”

“Hey, hey,” Osamu protests, “I have it on good authority that my couch is very comfortable, thank you very much.”

Suna rolls his eyes. “Sure it is,” he says. 

It’s late and the street around them is quiet and calm, nothing like the bustle that fills the space during the day. Around them, neon lights flicker and make Osamu’s hair a dazzling array of colors, make his grey eyes shine. _He’s beautiful_ , Suna thinks, not for the first time, but bites his tongue. 

“Samu!” Atsumu calls out to him from halfway down the block. “Let’s go. I’m tired.” 

Osamu raises an eyebrow at Suna and shakes his head as if to say, _can you believe this guy?_ Suna chuckles softly. 

“See you around?” Osamu asks, an invitation, maybe, or just a thing that’s said for the sake of saying it. 

Suna nods. “Yeah,” he says and means it this time. “Yeah, for sure.”

Suna’s ribs still ache, but the warm smile that Osamu gives him before turning to catch up with Atsumu has him thinking again that maybe this is worth it.  
  


* * *

  
It’s something he probably should have expected, in hindsight, but it still surprises Suna when he tweaks his shoulder during the second set of a match early in the season and returns to the locker room to find Osamu’s name flashing across his phone screen, a new text message pinging in as Suna goes to change. 

_Sorry about your shoulder_ , it reads. _Buy you dinner after the match to cheer you up?_

Suna blinks at his phone for a long moment, trying to remember if he saw Osamu at all before the match, but they’d gotten caught in traffic and by the time the bus arrived, the arena was crowded and Suna didn’t have much of a chance to look around before warmups started. He wonders idly if Osamu looked for him and then quickly squashes the thought as he types out a reply. If Suna had any sense of self-preservation, he’d maybe try to come up with an excuse to say no—getting dinner with the team, perhaps, or just needing to rest after playing and getting injured—but it’s always been so easy, saying yes to Osamu. Yes, I’ll stay for extra practice with you. Yes, I’ll walk with you after school even though that’s the long way home. Yes, I’ll have dinner with you even though I’ve been trying so hard to be kinder to my heart. 

Osamu’s waiting for Suna outside the arena when the team’s wrapped up their post-game meeting and are set free into the world for the night with a reminder to be up bright and early for the bus ride back home. It’s well into evening already, and the light is low and warm, illuminating a bright halo around Osamu’s head as he looks up and spots Suna. He offers a small smile and waves, and somehow, it’s even more blinding than the glare of the setting sun.

“How’s the shoulder?” Osamu asks by way of greeting. 

Suna rolls his shoulder back, feels the pull of the athletic tape the team’s trainer patched him up with. It aches a little, but not really in a way that matters. 

“I’ve had worse,” Suna says, which makes Osamu let out a huff of a breath like a laugh. 

“Comforting,” Osamu says, an edge of a smile curling the corner of his mouth up. There’s a beat, and Osamu shoves his hands in his pockets and asks, “Still up for dinner? What do you want? My treat.”

The sun catches on flyaway strands of Osamu’s hair, making it look like spun gold. Suna shrugs. 

“I don’t really care,” he says, rocking back on his heels a little. “I’m good with whatever. You pick.”

Osamu gives Suna this look like he’s being deliberately difficult and heaves a sigh that’s about two shades too exasperated to be entirely genuine. The pout of his mouth makes him look boyish and cute, and if Suna were a more daring person, he might’ve leaned in to kiss Osamu the first time he looked at him like that, or any time after.

“Suna, you’re killing me,” Osamu whines, but his voice is light, playful. “Please for once have an opinion about this.”

Suna laughs quietly like it’s an old joke, but there’s a part of him that, for a moment, doesn’t really know what to say. It’s something he used to say a lot, back in high school— _I don’t care, you pick_ —and Osamu would sometimes complain about how Suna never seemed to care about what he was eating, only that there was food in front of him and he was hungry. Suna remembers laughing and going along with it at the time because it seemed like the thing to do, and before he knew it, years had passed and he’d never gotten around to explaining that it wasn’t that he didn’t care. It wasn’t that he didn’t have opinions about what he ate, but rather that Osamu always looked so very pleased when they got the meat buns he wanted from the convenience store on the way home from school or tried the new ramen shop downtown Osamu had heard people talking about or bought towering ice cream cones in the middle of winter because Osamu insisted even though they were both freezing their asses off to go get them. _I don’t care_ , Suna had said, time and time again, because it seemed easier and less terrifying than trying to explain that what he really meant by that was _I care about you more_. 

Osamu’s looking at Suna expectantly and Suna thinks about fall at Inarizaki, walking home with the first hints of winter nipping at the tip of his nose and colorful leaves scattered across the ground. Osamu would try to crunch leaves under his feet with every step, most days, mouth turned down in concentration, and Suna would sometimes press his perpetually cold fingertips against the back of Osamu’s neck, impulsively, like he was fighting the scenery for Osamu’s attention. Osamu would always jump and yelp and manage to look so shocked and offended that Suna couldn’t help laughing, every time, and after a moment, Osamu would cave and smile a little too and ask if Suna wanted to go get something warm to eat. It never really helped Suna’s hands, but he’d always say yes anyways. 

“Curry,” Suna says after some consideration, thinking about the tiny, hole-in-the-wall place back home they’d sometimes go to on afternoons like that. 

Osamu hums, satisfied. “That sounds good,” he says, tapping through his phone to look up restaurants nearby. 

Suna ducks his chin behind the collar of his jacket and tamps down on the urge to say, _I know_.  
  


* * *

  
Suna manages to make it almost to the new year before losing his perpetual, annual battle with the seasonal flu. In high school, he’d be lucky to hold out till winter break when he could just lie in bed for several days without worrying about missing too much practice, but he’d never had to miss a Spring Tournament, so he’d always counted his blessings. There had been a part of him that hoped that after high school, now that he doesn’t spend every day crammed into a club room with a bunch of rowdy, dirty teenaged boys, now that he doesn’t have to attend training camps filled with too much communal space, that he’d outgrow it all. But Suna lives on his own now and playing professional volleyball is nothing like high school and yet winter still finds him curled up on his couch, high on cold medicine and buried under several blankets as he watches shitty dramas until he passes out. The EJP Raijin have a match downtown that he’s missing today, but when the time rolls around, he doesn’t really have the energy or willpower to put it on. The drama blares on instead. 

Sometime in the afternoon, Suna’s jolted awake from a fitful nap by a sharp knock on his door. He groans and burrows a little deeper into his nest of blankets, hoping that whoever it is will take a hint and leave without too much fuss. He’s got a headache building at his temples, and the pain throbs in time with the knocking on his door that won’t let up. After a moment, he sighs and throws the blankets off of himself so he can yell at whoever’s at his door. The universe is telling him to deal with things like an adult today, he supposes. 

Suna yanks the door open with more force than necessary, mouth set in a firm scowl, and then runs face first into Osamu. He’s got one hand still raised, halfway to knocking on Suna’s door again, and he arches an eyebrow when Suna’s irritated expression drops, replaced instead by wide-eyed surprise. There are many thoughts that fly through Suna’s head in that instant, ranging from a simple _hello_ to _what are you doing here_ to _I can’t believe you’re seeing me in this sorry state_ , but what he ends up blurting out is: 

“How do you know where I live?”

Osamu blinks and then after a moment laughs. “Komori told me,” he says easily, and Suna narrows his eyes and thinks, perhaps unfairly, _gossip_. “You gonna let me in?”

“What for?” Suna asks, and he has no idea, really, why he’s being so difficult, but he’s sick and tired and his pounding headache hasn’t gotten any better, so he hopes he’ll be forgiven. 

Osamu’s expression softens, just a touch, and Suna wonders about how pitiful he must look to warrant Osamu looking at him like that. He fights the urge to slam the door shut in Osamu’s face and hide.

“Have you eaten recently?” Osamu asks instead of answering properly, and as if in response, Suna’s stomach growls. The corner of Osamu’s mouth twitches, but he offers, “I’ll make you some soup. Go lie back down. You look like shit.”

It’s then that Suna notices that Osamu’s holding a bag of groceries, and it makes something in his chest shift. He turns away and coughs, throat dry.

“So sweet of you to say. No wonder we’re friends,” Suna says, voice dripping with sarcasm even though saying it makes him feel like he’s being just a little to honest. 

Osamu laughs as he follows Suna into his apartment, and as Suna trudges back to his couch to nestle himself once more in his cocoon of blankets, he can hear Osamu rifling around in his kitchen, the occasional _clang_ of pots bumping into each other, the low _hiss_ of his gas stove starting, the soft sound of Osamu humming something to himself as he works. It’s the first time Osamu’s ever been to his apartment, but Suna finds himself thinking that this feels like home. The sound of Osamu chopping vegetables in his kitchen. The TV playing in the background. The smell of something delicious slowly wafting in from the other room. Suna frowns and tries to swallow the thought back down with another dose of medicine. 

Suna must fall asleep again, because the next thing he knows, he’s being shaken awake, and the light filtering in from outside has started to dim. He blinks the sleep out of his eyes, and then for a moment, wonders if he’s still dreaming. Osamu’s kneeling in front of him with the back of his hand on Suna’s forehead, the soft curve of his mouth pulled down in concern. He’s close enough that Suna can see the little flecks of gold in his grey eyes, and Suna finds himself holding his breath. Osamu smiles a little when he sees Suna wake and sits back, reaching to pass Suna a large bowl. The stupid, irrational part of Suna wants to say something dumb like _wait, no, come back_ , but he pushes the impulse back and instead sits up to accept the offer, trying to avoid letting his fingertips bump into Osamu’s. The soup is hot and rich and it makes Suna feel warm down to the tips of his toes, momentarily chasing away the fever chills and making him feel marginally more human than he has all day. He sticks a foot out from under the blankets to nudge Osamu, who’s still sitting on the ground, leaning back on his hands and idly watching whatever has come up next in Suna’s Netflix queue. 

“Hey,” Suna says softly. And then when Osamu turns to look at him, “Thanks.”

Osamu shrugs. “I was in town for work anyways,” he says, matching Suna’s low tone. “I couldn’t very well leave you to die alone.”

Suna rolls his eyes. “Don’t be so dramatic. It’s just the flu,” he says, even though he feels a little like his heart might burst out of his chest at any moment. A minute or two passes, and Osamu doesn’t make any move to leave, so Suna say quietly, “You don’t have to stay. I’ll be fine. You’re just going to get sick too.”

Osamu hums. “You know,” he says, thoughtful even though Suna knows he’s almost certainly being anything but, “My employees keep telling me I should take a couple days off from work.”

Suna fights the urge to laugh. “I doubt this is what they had in mind,” he says. 

Osamu grins, wide and cheeky, so unlike the practiced, affected calm he wears as a constant counterbalance to a brother he no longer spends nearly every waking moment with. Suna wonders sometimes how many people have seen this smile, how many people have seen the way it gathers around Osamu’s eyes and makes him look bright and open.

Osamu ends up staying. He stays and makes Suna eat a proper dinner, makes him tea with honey and lemon to soothe his sore throat, makes him go to bed at a reasonable hour instead of staying up mindlessly because even sick, Suna’s admittedly shit at taking care of himself. Suna whines about it and makes excuses about wanting to catch up on some shows, and Osamu threatens to carry Suna to bed himself if he has to. They end up meeting somewhere in the middle, and as Suna burrows under the five different blankets he piles on top of himself during the winter months, Osamu begrudgingly brings Suna’s laptop in from the living room to queue up some more episodes for Suna to watch. 

“At least try to get some rest,” Osamu says, exasperated but still, Suna thinks, a little bit fond. 

“This is rest,” Suna says, voice muffled by the blankets he’s got pulled up to his ears. 

Osamu shakes his head at Suna, but the corners of his mouth are curling up into a small smile. “Take care, Suna,” he says softly.

Osamu turns to leave, for home probably, because it’s getting late and home is still hours away for him, and something about the thought hits Suna strangely in his chest, some kind of dull, far away pang surfacing under his skin that has nothing to do with the headache he hasn’t quite been able to shake all day. His hand shoots out from beneath his blankets without his meaning to and he grabs Osamu by the wrist, cool against Suna’s feverish skin. Osamu stops mid-step and looks down at where Suna’s holding him, looks up a moment later and meets Suna’s eyes. There’s a look on his face that Suna can’t quite place, something he’s maybe never seen before, something at once bewildered and oh so gentle. It makes Suna’s insides squirm uncomfortably, and he lets go of Osamu’s wrist, pulling his hand back like he’s been burned and tugging his blankets the rest of the way up over his head. 

“Sorry,” he mumbles into the layers of heavy cotton. 

The air is still and quiet for a long moment, and Suna wonders if maybe Osamu didn’t hear him, or if maybe he’s taken this opportunity to beat a hasty retreat, but then the bed dips down a little, and when Suna peeks out from under his blankets again, he finds Osamu settling in next to him, balancing Suna’s laptop on his knees. Suna stares at him, dumbfounded. This is the part where, if Suna had any kind of sense, he should probably tell Osamu to leave, because at this rate it’s all but a guarantee that he’s going to get Osamu sick, because at this rate all Suna’s going to be left with in the morning is an aching heart and the taste in his mouth of something just out of reach. But he’s exhausted and he feels like crap and he’s definitely at least a little loopy on too much cold medicine, or at least this is what he tells himself as he scoots a little closer and lets himself curl up against Osamu, head in Osamu’s lap, as the theme music for a drama Suna’s already forgotten the title of plays quietly from his laptop speakers. Suna’s face feels hot in a way that he knows he can’t quite blame on his fever or the truly ridiculous number of blankets he has piled on top of himself, but he figures it’s as good enough of an excuse as any. After a minute or two, Suna feels Osamu’s fingers thread through his hair, applying pressure just so across Suna’s scalp like he knows Suna’s head has been threatening to split in two all day, and Suna lets his eyes fall shut, lets himself be lulled to sleep to dream of something he can’t have.

(In the morning, when Suna wakes, he’s alone, but when he stumbles into his kitchen, he finds a sticky note on his fridge with instructions in Osamu’s tiny, tidy handwriting for how to heat up the leftovers Osamu’s packed away for him in neat Tupperware containers. It’s almost enough.)  
  


* * *

  
When Suna’s birthday rolls around just past the new year, Komori takes it upon himself to throw him a party. He invites everyone on their team and every one of Suna’s high school friends that he can track down, and between all of them and their friends and friends’ friends, Suna’s apartment the night of is a veritable who’s who of the professional volleyball scene. 

“What if this isn’t what I want?” Suna had said when Komori had proposed the idea at practice earlier in the week. 

Komori had grinned, unfazed. “Relax,” he’d said, waving off Suna’s concerns. “It’s not like I’m making you go out or anything. We’re just going to hang out at your place. It’ll be great.”

In hindsight, Suna supposes, he probably could’ve protested more and made Komori back down, but try as he might, there’s always been a little part of him drawn to a particular kind of chaos, a storm that begins with a series of excited texts from the old team group chat and ends with Osamu and Atsumu crashing into his apartment at just past nine on one of the final days of January, arms laden with beer and sake and a homemade cake. 

It all ends up, admittedly, being a lot of fun, having all of his friends over, shouting over each other and music playing through the speakers in Suna’s living room, and even as it stretches late into the night, Suna thinks to himself that there have been worse birthdays, all things considered. He does have limits, though, for how much tomfoolery he can take in one go, and around midnight, there are still enough people in his apartment for it to still be lively, if not quite as rambunctious as earlier, and Suna takes a brief lull where no one is really paying attention to him to slip on a coat and duck out to his balcony, making a quick stop to help himself to a brimming mug of the mulled wine that someone made when he wasn’t looking. As he slides the glass door shut behind him, the din of the party fades into a low murmur, and he lets out a long breath as he goes to lean on his balcony railing and gaze out over the city. His mug is pleasantly warm in his hands, and his breath comes out in white puffs in the cold air. It’s snowed a little in the past few hours, a light dusting over rooftops, and around him, the city feels quiet and still. Suna blows lightly at his drink and takes a sip, closing his eyes as it settles, warm and comforting, in his belly. 

A handful of minutes go by before Suna hears the door slide open behind him, a brief swell of noise following someone stepping outside before it shuts again. Suna hears Osamu curse under his breath and smiles but doesn’t turn around. 

“What are you doing out here?” Osamu says, coming to stand next to Suna. He’s dressed in a chunky red sweater that makes his cheeks look extra rosy. “It’s freezing.”

“It’s quiet,” Suna corrects, taking another sip of his drink. He hears Osamu let out a huff of a breath. Suna looks at Osamu out of the corner of his eye, catching him crossing his arms across his chest and shivering a little. “You didn’t have to come out here, you know. I just needed a break. Parties aren’t really my thing.”

Osamu laughs, shifting his weight back and forth from one foot to the other in some attempt to stay a little warmer, but he doesn’t make any move to leave. His shoulder bumps against Suna’s and they stand in a comfortable silence for a moment before Osamu turns away and sneezes. Suna frowns. 

“You’re going to get sick,” he says flatly. “Go inside.”

Osamu just shrugs and huddles in a little closer to Suna. “It’s fine,” he says, voice light. “You can’t get the flu twice in the same year, right?”

Suna laughs even though the mere mention of the fact that Osamu really did get sick last month makes his throat constrict. He looks at Osamu, at the way his cheeks are flushed from the winter chill, at the way his mouth curves up into a warm smile like it’s not a burden, going through all of that just for Suna.

( _Oops_ , is all Osamu had texted Suna a couple days after he’d visited, but it’d gotten the point across just fine.) 

Osamu eyes the mug Suna’s holding and makes a sort of grabby hands motion that has no right to be as cute as it is. “That looks warm,” he says. “Gimme.”

Osamu doesn’t wait for Suna to hand him the mug, just goes and plucks it out of Suna’s hands, and Suna does his level best to look exasperated.

“Of course, by all means,” he says, eye-roll implied, even though he feels something heavy settling in right behind his ribs. 

“Hey, I made this,” Osamu says, and Suna supposes that he probably should’ve guessed. “I think I have the right to have however much I want.”

Osamu grins at Suna over the rim of the mug, and Suna really does roll his eyes now, if only so he has an excuse to look away, if only because the hopeless, lovesick part of him wants to say something ridiculous like _here, have me instead_. He looks back out over the sleeping city, eyes the stray, lit up windows in the buildings around him, some with shadows moving just past drawn curtains. He wonders how many more years it’ll be before the view stops feeling so lonely. He tugs the ends of his sleeves over his hands, curling his cold fingers into his palms. 

Next to Suna, Osamu makes a small, apologetic noise and says, “Here.”

He nudges the still warm mug into Suna’s hands again, and it’s mostly empty now, but Suna can still feel his fingertips start to thaw. He tips his head to one side and pins Osamu with narrowed eyes. 

“There’s barely any left, asshole,” he says, but it doesn’t have much bite to it. 

Osamu smiles a little guiltily. “Oops,” he says, and laughs when Suna shoves him. 

The tip of Osamu’s nose is red and his eyes are crinkled into two crescent moons, and Suna wants, so badly, to press his mouth against where a dimple dips into Osamu’s left cheek, so he finishes off the rest of his drink and shoos Osamu back inside, following him into the warmth and noise of his living room. He’s had too much to drink, he thinks, pulse leaping against his skin as Osamu takes the mug from him to refill it, their fingertips brushing lightly. He’s not had enough, he thinks, watching Osamu walk away from him and wishing he could ever feel bold enough to ask him to stay. 

Within the hour, the party’s all but wound down, the last few stragglers gathering their things up to leave. Suna sees them to the door, laughing when Komori grins at him and smacks a hand down on his shoulder ( _See? That wasn’t so bad, was it?_ ), and when he turns back around to a mostly empty apartment, he finds Osamu standing with his arms crossed and staring down at Suna’s couch. 

“Do you think he’s dead?” Osamu asks with the mild tone of someone asking about the weather. 

Suna wanders over and snorts when he sees how Atsumu’s sprawled out across his couch, limbs everywhere and out cold. Suna gestures towards a small trash can in the far corner of the room. 

“Bring that over, would you?” he says. “I don’t want him barfing on my carpet when he wakes up.”

Osamu chuckles. As he places the bin next to the couch, he looks up at Suna with a question in his eyes and then maybe hesitates, just a fraction of a second. But then Osamu’s smiling again, warm and cheerful, and Suna isn’t quite sure that he wasn’t just imagining it. 

“Hey, Suna,” Osamu says, voice almost playful like he’s about to ask Suna to sneak out at night to go stargazing in the summer or rope him into some elaborate plot to get back at Atsumu for stealing his pudding. “Let me sleep in your room tonight.”

Suna blinks. “What?” he says, more sharply than he means, a defense mechanism, maybe. When the twins had asked, earlier in the day, if they could spend the night at his place because neither of them wanted to make the hours-long trek back to their respective homes in the dead of night, it had felt like a no-brainer. Of course he was always going to say yes. Of course it would be okay. But he’d agreed to it with the safe assumption of a little distance, like always, like when he’d set out a futon for Osamu when he and Atsumu were fighting back in high school. This, whatever Osamu is asking of him, is new. This is not what he thought he’d been agreeing to. 

“Please?” Osamu asks, and he’s pouting a little now, eyes wide, lower lip jutting out. Suna can feel his willpower crumbling by the second. “You really gonna make me sleep out here with Tsumu hogging the whole couch?”

Suna can’t think of a single reasonable excuse to say no, and Osamu’s still looking at him with those goddamn puppy eyes, and Suna lets out a long breath and drags his hand down his face. 

“Yeah, okay,” Suna says, and wonders a little if he ever was really going to turn him down. 

“You’re the best,” Osamu says, beaming, and Suna knows that the answer to his own question is a resounding _no_. 

As Osamu follows Suna to his bedroom, Suna forces himself to take measured breaths in and out on counts of five and manages to mostly succeed at slowing his heart to a normal pace. It’ll be okay, he thinks to himself. There’s nothing to be anxious about. This is fine.

When they get to his room, Suna digs around in his dresser for a t-shirt and a pair of shorts and tosses them in Osamu’s general direction. 

“Here,” Suna says, voice level, even as he feels his heart inching its way back up to his throat. “You are _not_ getting into my bed in dirty clothes.”

Osamu makes a dumb sort of saluting gesture ( _roger that_ ) and Suna rolls his eyes. Suna changes quickly and ducks out of his room to grab a glass of water and have a moment to steady himself, and when he returns, he finds Osamu lying in his bed, tucked in under his blankets. He’s holding his phone above his face as he taps through something, the glow of his phone the only source of light in the room other than the small lamp on Suna’s nightstand. For a moment, Suna can’t breathe, frozen at the threshold of his room, because it feels almost cruel, in a way, that this is so close to what he wants, that this could almost be the future he’d pictured for himself when he stared at the back of Osamu’s head during class and dreamed of a more generous world. Osamu must hear him shuffle in, because he looks away from his phone and offers Suna a small smile, and Suna’s world lurches back into motion again. 

“Do you really sleep with this many blankets all the time?” Osamu asks as Suna sets the glass of water down on his nightstand and gets settled in. “How do you not suffocate?”

Suna arches an eyebrow at him. “If you don’t like it, sleep on the floor.”

Osamu laughs and raises his hands in surrender, lying flat on his back as Suna goes to turn out the light. Suna rolls over on his stomach and shoves his arms under his pillow, willing his nerves to calm down. In the dim light, he can just make out the outline of Osamu’s profile, illuminated by a tiny sliver of moonlight filtering in through a crack in the curtains. After a moment, Osamu tips his head to one side to look at Suna. It’s too dark to see Osamu’s eyes, but Suna stares back anyways. 

“Hey, Suna,” Osamu says quietly, just barely over a whisper. 

“Mm?” Suna hums, even and low. 

For someone who falls asleep so easily, it’s always felt like Osamu thinks the most in the moments just before he drifts off. Suna expects some kind of question, some idle musing like Osamu often wanders towards when he’s waiting for sleep to take him, but for a long moment, Osamu doesn’t say anything. He’s quiet and still, and Osamu’s often quiet and still, but there’s something that feels significant and almost expectant about this. Suna can almost feel the weight of whatever it is that Osamu’s mulling over, heavy and oppressive, and he waits, holding his breath, but Osamu still says nothing, the only sound between them the steady in-out of Osamu’s breathing and Suna’s own heartbeat in his ears. It goes on for so long that Suna begins to wonder if maybe Osamu fell asleep mid-thought, begins to wonder if he’s just imagining the way the air feels thick, but then Osamu lets out a breath and turns his head back up to stare at the ceiling again. 

“Happy birthday,” Osamu says softly, finally. 

Suna swallows, knowing without knowing how or why that there’s some secret Osamu’s just tucked away inside himself. He wants to know what it is. He doesn’t want to know. He doesn’t let himself pry. 

_Exhale._

“Thanks.”  
  


* * *

  
When the regular season ends, Suna has plans to do nothing but sleep and laze around his apartment because the crunch of the last stretch of matches somehow always feels so much more and more exhausting than any other time. He has plans to get takeout from his favorite restaurants and not have to see anyone and catch up on some shows he’s fallen behind on between practices and traveling all over the country each weekend. He has all these plans, and then the season ends, and Suna finds himself back in Hyogo instead, wandering into Onigiri Miya on a Wednesday night and realizing that this is the first time he’s set foot in the proper shop and not just loitered around the booth before or after matches, even though Osamu keeps asking him to visit next time he’s in town, even though Suna keeps promising he’ll come around eventually. Suna doesn’t know why, exactly, he keeps putting it off, except that coming here feels, somehow, like he’s right on the threshold of something, and he keeps backing away at the last minute. 

Onigiri Miya, when Suna walks in on a Wednesday night after the end of the regular season, is a small place but cozy and busy, the white noise of people talking and laughing over good food filling his ears as soon as he steps in. A small bell above the door announces his entrance cheerfully, and he hears Osamu’s distinct voice from somewhere at the back of the shop rise above the chatter ( _Welcome! Be with you in a second!_ ) and he smiles. It’s the first time he’s been here, but as he looks around at all of the packed tables and smiling faces and catches sight of Osamu behind the counter working and laughing at something one of his employees said, Suna thinks that it’s like it was always meant to be this way, like this tiny pocket of the universe, at least, worked out the way it was supposed to, even if he’s not here in the way he’d like to be, even if he’s here just as a friend and nothing more. 

Osamu turns and spots Suna, and just like that, his whole face lights up, all at once warm and excited, and Suna can’t help the involuntary smile that pulls at the corners of his own mouth too. 

“Suna,” Osamu says, bright and pleased. “I didn’t know you were in town.”

Suna shrugs, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Season just ended,” he says, as if he’d ever needed an excuse to see Osamu before. “Won’t be able to steal onigiri from you after matches for a while.”

Osamu snorts. “So you thought you’d come and steal from me here?” he asks, but his tone is light.

Suna smirks, sliding into an empty seat at the counter. He rests an elbow down on the countertop and cradles his chin in the palm of his hand, says, “Someone should.”

Osamu laughs and shakes his head at Suna but goes to make Suna something to eat anyways. Suna watches him, fiddling with the zipper of his jacket idly. He’s always liked watching Osamu cook, has always liked seeing the way his focus narrows in on one point, a kind of odd combination between a quiet sense of peace and an unshakable intensity that settles over him as he works. It reminds Suna a little bit of spiking drills during training camps, the way Osamu would sometimes get into a groove that seemed to carry him the whole day, the perfect balance between power and grace. Suna’s always wondered what it’d be like, to be on the receiving end of attention like that. 

“Order up,” Osamu says, breaking through Suna’s thoughts. 

Suna blinks and hopes he wasn’t staring too obviously as he accepts the plate Osamu’s holding out to him. He eyes the onigiri sitting neatly in the middle of it, wondering how something so simple can give off such a sense of care. He knows it shouldn’t surprise him that when he bites into it, it’s delicious, and it’s perfectly seasoned just so, and it’s—

“Is this the spicy cucumber?” Suna asks Osamu, who’s still looking at him rather expectantly. 

Osamu’s smile widens just a tick. “Yeah,” he says. “You said you liked it when I had you trying things out for me.”

Suna raises an eyebrow at him, because Osamu says it like it could’ve been just yesterday when they both know that was something like six months ago. Suna has no idea how Osamu remembers all these little things sometimes, because it’s always been this way, Osamu remembering all the tiny, nitpicky details—that Suna prefers coffee over tea but will accept tea if it’s accompanied by a healthy spoonful of honey and it’s cold out, that Suna doesn’t really like carrots unless it’s in a curry, that Suna likes having yakisoba for dinner on his birthday because that’s what his grandmother always used to make him growing up. But Suna supposes that Osamu’s always had a knack for remembering anything and everything to do with food. 

“So you ended up adding it to the menu,” Suna says, taking another bite of his onigiri. 

“Yeah, it turns out you do have some taste in food after all,” Osamu says, a sort of teasing lilt sneaking into his voice. “It’s very popular.”

Suna rolls his eyes. “You’re welcome,” he says lightly, licking a stray grain of rice off of his thumb. 

Osamu sort of stares at Suna for a moment, a soft smile frozen on his face, and Suna feels the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, suddenly hyperaware of his own body. He summons up his best smug grin, trying to inject a little something that he recognizes back into the conversation, and at that, Osamu makes a sort of annoyed face at him, and the moment passes. Suna breathes.

“Want another?” Osamu asks. “On the house.”

Suna laughs. “You do this for everyone, or just friends you’re trying to bribe into visiting you more often?” he asks, half in jest, half because every time Osamu tells him to drop by the next time he’s in town, Suna feels a twinge of guilt tug at his chest. 

Osamu smiles as he scoops out some more rice to make Suna another onigiri. He doesn’t look at Suna as he works, attention focused on the task at hand, but the look on his face is soft and fond. 

“Just you,” Osamu says quietly, just barely audible over the background noise of the shop, and Suna swears his heart stops in his chest for a second. 

It’s not fair, he thinks sometimes, the way Osamu sometimes hands out easy affections like it comes naturally to him, like he can just say things like this without feeling like his throat is closing up. Their whole friendship, it’s been like this, Osamu scattering tiny kindnesses all over Suna’s life when he least expects it ( _missed you_ when Suna got sick and stayed home from school, _I’ll wait for you_ when Suna had to stay behind at the end of the day to talk to their teacher, _saved you a spot_ when Suna overslept his alarm and showed up right under the wire to board the bus for away games). Suna’s always felt helpless against it, unable to do much else except for offer up a small smile when all he really wants to ask is _but do you really mean it? How much? For how long?_  
  


* * *

  
(Here’s a distinct memory that Suna has:

Suna’s in Osamu’s apartment, fresh out of high school, home for the weekend and helping Osamu move. Osamu has no furniture to speak of and there are boxes everywhere, and they’re sitting on the floor eating the strawberry cheesecake Osamu had bribed Suna with to get him to help, spoiling their appetites for dinner and laughing and laughing and laughing. Suna grins with a fork sticking out of his mouth ( _I love strawberries_ ). Osamu smiles that small, secret smile that Suna thinks he fell in love with the first time he saw it ( _I know_ ).

Osamu reaches over and tugs on Suna’s hair, saying, “Your hair’s getting kinda long, huh?”

Suna swats his hand away and makes a face. “I’ve been busy.”

“You mean you’ve been lazy,” Osamu says, laughing, and he’s not wrong, exactly. He’s always been good at reading Suna like that. Osamu leans in, eyeing Suna’s hair thoughtfully and brushing Suna’s bangs out of his eyes. “Want me to cut it for you? I cut my own hair all the time. I’m pretty good.”

Suna rolls his eyes, something odd and jittery crawling up his spine. “You are _not_ getting anywhere near my face with scissors,” he says flatly. 

Osamu laughs, still toying with Suna’s hair a little, and he’s close, he’s very close. A shaft of light from one of the windows falls across Osamu’s face, his eyelashes casting long shadows over his cheeks, making his features look soft and sweet, and Suna thinks then that he doesn’t know if he’ll ever meet anyone else quite like this. And if he were just braver, if he weren’t so utterly terrified of shattering what is, in truth, a very good thing with stupid, selfish feelings, he’d maybe lean in a little too to meet Osamu halfway, press his mouth to Osamu’s like he’s wanted to for years. There’s a moment, too, where Suna almost does it, almost gives in to that pull in his chest that’s been drawing him to Osamu like gravity since high school, because Osamu’s fingers are gentle in his hair and he hasn’t quite looked away and his eyes are so devastatingly beautiful. It’s a moment that feels significant and expectant, the kind that makes Suna want to have something to show for it at the end of the day.

It’s then that the door to Osamu’s apartment slams open, and Suna jumps about a foot in the air, and the moment’s gone, like a dream evaporating the moment he wakes up to his real life again. Atsumu whirls in like a hurricane, and within seconds, he and Osamu are bickering because Atsumu was supposed to help Osamu move, too, but Atsumu swears up and down that he’s in the middle of having a crisis and sorry but no, it couldn’t wait.)

(Here’s a memory that Suna has:

He runs all the way back to his family home from the train station that day, chest aching and eyes stinging at the corners like he’s about to cry. He locks himself in his room, throwing himself on his bed and pulling a pillow over his face so he can let out a scream that’s been clawing at his throat for some time. 

Suna makes a promise to himself that day that he’s going to make himself be good, be better, that he’s going to make himself let go of things that aren’t meant to be, because it’s too much, letting himself go through this time and time again. All the little, quiet moments between him and Osamu that he’s stolen and tucked away in between his ribs. All the many times Suna let himself think _what if_. 

He’ll be better, he decides, more careful. He’ll walk it all back until he can do this without feeling like his lungs might burst each time he talks. Put some distance between them. Make things right in his heart. He’ll be good, because Osamu’s his friend, maybe the closest friend he’s ever had, and this is something he never wants to lose.)

(Here’s a memory Suna has:

He makes this promise to himself and thinks, even right then and there, that it’ll never be enough.)  
  


* * *

  
Suna often wonders if the course of his life can be plotted in concentric circles, with the way he keeps finding himself back where he started but two inches to the left. It’s summer again and hot, and Suna’s supposed to be spending the weekend at home with his family, but the air conditioning in his house is busted and he got in a fight with his sister earlier in the morning, so Suna finds himself at Osamu’s apartment instead, squeezed into Osamu’s tiny, poorly ventilated bathroom, watching idly as Osamu mixes some hair dye in a small plastic bowl. 

“Remind me how you talked me into this again,” Suna says around a sigh, crossing his arms. 

Osamu lets out a huff of a breath. “Like you had better plans,” he says. “Besides, it should be easier this time. No bleach.”

“If it’s so easy, do it yourself,” Suna says, but he’s already going to slip on a pair of gloves.

“And miss the opportunity to have you pamper me?” Osamu says, mouth pulled up into a cheeky grin. “Not a chance.”

Suna tries to ignore the way Osamu’s comment makes his traitor heart stutter in his chest as he reaches to take the bowl Osamu’s offering him, letting Osamu get settled in the chair he’s wedged into the cramped space. Suna can feel Osamu watching him through the mirror and stares at the contents of the bowl instead of meeting his eyes. 

“What made you want to dye your hair, anyway?” Suna asks, more to have something to say than anything else. He swishes the small brush around in the dark solution. 

Osamu shrugs. “Got tired of having to touch up my roots all the time,” he says. “It’s a lot of work.”

Suna hums as he starts painting over Osamu’s silvery-grey hair with the dye. “So you do know how to do it on your own,” he says. He chances a glance up to narrow his eyes at Osamu through the mirror. “Do you just enjoy inconveniencing your friends?”

Osamu laughs, shoulders shaking but otherwise careful not to move too much. “Maybe I just wanted an excuse to get you to come visit me again,” he says.

Osamu’s voice is light and playful like it’s a joke, like he’s just teasing Suna, but Suna’s chest clenches uncomfortably anyways. _No fair_ , Suna wants to whine childishly as he works on Osamu’s hair, but he bites his tongue, reminding himself that the universe has never once promised to be fair. Suna works quietly and methodically on Osamu’s hair and tries to ignore the impending sense of déjà vu creeping up on him, remembering being here almost a year ago, tinkering with Osamu’s hair and teasing him about its halfway stages. Suna remembers running his fingers through Osamu’s hair, trying to work out all the tangles so he wouldn’t miss a spot trying to tone the bright, brassy blonde of freshly bleached hair to Osamu’s favorite muted silver. He remembers trying to stay dry when Osamu rinsed out his hair for the final time that day and then turned to Suna with a mischievous glint in his eye, before shaking the water out of his hair like a puppy, holding Suna in place by the wrists so he couldn’t run away. Suna remembers laughing despite his best efforts and then looking at Osamu just inches away from him and thinking _I should kiss you right now_ and then stopping himself. Suna wonders, sometimes, if this is all he has to look forward to for the rest of his life, this series of _almosts_ , this constant feeling of _I could, but I can’t_. 

It takes half an hour between when Suna finishes applying the dye to Osamu’s hair and when Osamu returns to his bathroom to rinse it all out, Suna wandering over behind him if for no other reason than to have something to do. He leans against the doorframe, arms crossed, watching as Osamu pats his hair dry and examines his reflection in the mirror, picking at his freshly dyed hair a little uncertainly. Suna does the math and realizes that he’s the first person after something like a third of Osamu’s life to see his natural hair color. The thought hits him a little oddly, knocking him off-balance.

Osamu turns to face Suna and asks, “Well? What do you think?”

Osamu with black hair looks softer around the edges somehow, like this is the person he was always supposed to be, and the dark contrast makes his eyes look brighter and sharper. Suna feels that tug in his chest and thinks, _you look beautiful_. Thinks, _you always look beautiful._

What ends up coming out of Suna’s mouth a moment later, though, is, “That’s so weird.”

Osamu snorts and rolls his eyes. “Gee, thanks,” he says flatly, turning away to finish tidying up the various odds and ends they’ve left scattered across his bathroom counter, miscellaneous brushes and hairclips, and a bottle of developer and little plastic scoops to measure everything out in proper proportions. Osamu says it like it’s nothing, like it doesn’t matter, but Suna gets the distinct impression that it does, maybe, for some unknown reason, and winces. 

“I mean,” Suna says, trying to take it back without sounding like that’s what he’s doing, “I’ve never seen you with black hair before. So it’s just… kind of weird.”

Osamu lets out a breath and pins Suna with an unimpressed look. “Well, get used to it,” Osamu says pointedly, like he’s taking some kind of oath, “’Cause one way or another, this is how it’s going to be from now on.”

Osamu makes as if to brush by Suna, saying something about lunch and the place down the street that does good soba noodles, and Suna still can’t shake the feeling that he’s maybe mis-stepped, just a little, even as Osamu wears his perfectly cool calm, even as he offers Suna a small smile as he slips by. Suna reaches out to catch Osamu by the elbow before he can think better of it, feeling a lump rise to the back of his throat when Osamu pauses and looks at him again. 

“It looks nice,” Suna says softly, wondering how such a small thing can feel so daunting, so risky. Osamu looks nice, almost always, and Suna knows this, has thought it a million times but never out loud, and maybe there’s something in the saying of it after all. 

Osamu laughs quietly. “No need to strain yourself on my account,” he says blithely, an out, if Suna wants it. 

And maybe it’s just that this is it, a tipping point, the place where everything he’s kept hidden away inside of himself gets pushed just too far and finally snaps, because there might’ve been a time when Suna would’ve taken it, would’ve deflected with a sly joke to corral them back into some kind of normalcy, but maybe it’s been just one too many times, maybe he’s just tired. Because Suna looks at Osamu and thinks about this collection of tiny moments he’s saved up—Osamu draping himself across Suna’s shoulders in high school during breaks in practice complaining about being tired and hungry, Osamu walking hand in hand with Suna all the way home in the winter because Suna always complained about his hands being cold, Osamu smiling ever so softly every time Suna ate something he made never mind that it was ridiculous to eat cake at eight in the morning or have hot soup in the middle of the summer heat wave. Suna thinks about all the times in between, the space between letting out a long breath and taking a new one, all the times he’s thought _maybe_ , looking at the bright shine in Osamu’s eyes or the delicate pout of his mouth. He finds that he doesn’t want the out anymore, _can’t_ want it, because he feels like the locked box that he keeps buried in his chest has grown full to bursting, and all the little things are starting to overflow. 

Suna reaches out and brushes Osamu’s hair out of his eyes. It’s still a little damp but soft despite how much Osamu’s put his hair through over the years, and Suna feels a blush creeping up the back of his neck but refuses to look away.

“I mean it,” Suna says, barely audible over the crash of his heart against his ribcage. 

Osamu’s gaze on Suna is thoughtful and careful, and he blinks slowly, once, twice, before his mouth pulls up into a slight smile, the kind that you’d only notice if you were really looking for it. 

“No take-backs,” Osamu says, and Suna thinks to himself that they’re probably not talking about hair anymore. Maybe they never really were, and he just didn’t hear it all this time. 

“I know,” Suna says, and knows deeply, intimately, that all those times he promised himself he’d leave this all behind someday, this way that he looks at Osamu sometimes and his whole body hurts like it’s screaming for him to return home, were lies. Clever lies sometimes, sure, borne out of self-preservation and a kind of desperation to inch right up to the edge, to see how far he can lean across the threshold without falling over, but lies all the same. 

Osamu’s expression when he looks at Suna is so painfully tender, and a quiet laugh spills over his lips that Suna catches with his own, and Suna thinks to himself that maybe this whole thing isn’t quite as sad as he’s been fearing for years, but he’s probably still been a little bit stupid about it after all. But maybe none of that matters, because Osamu kisses him back, kisses him like they have all the time in the world, lazy and languid and almost cloyingly sweet, like he’s savoring it. Suna can feel the crooked smile lingering on Osamu’s lips as Suna tangles his fingers in Osamu’s hair, can feel Osamu’s hands curled into fists in Suna’s shirt. The doorframe behind Suna digs into his back a little uncomfortably and he thinks to himself, distantly, that maybe it should feel like a more momentous thing, finally caving and kissing Osamu and letting loose this unnamed thing he’s kept trapped inside of himself for so many years. He thinks to himself that if this were a storybook, this is the place where it might feel like his whole world is being upended, but Suna finds that it’s not like that. It feels easy, like maybe one way or another he might’ve always ended up right here. It’s easy and simple and soft, but Suna supposes that that’s what he’s always liked best about Osamu, and he’s never really been partial to fairytales anyways.

Osamu’s still smiling when they part, that small, secret smile that’s always been Suna’s favorite, and he’s still so very close, his breath tickling Suna’s skin as he lets out a short breath, an almost-laugh, and Suna thinks, like he has so many times before, _I want to kiss you_. Thinks, _I never want to stop_. Thinks, for the first time, _I could do it, if I wanted to_. He feels warm all the way down to the tips of his toes.

“Hey, Suna,” Osamu says, conspiratorial like he’s about to divulge a secret, like he’d ask Suna to sneak out past curfew during training camps to walk the deserted school grounds or talk Suna into letting him copy his homework in exchange for a handful of brightly colored candies. 

Suna arches an eyebrow, but he can feel what he’s sure is a silly, all too fond grin pulling at the corners of his own mouth. The effect of the look is probably ruined, but Osamu laughs anyways. 

“Ask me again,” Osamu says, bright and playful.

Suna laughs. “Ask you what?”

“Ask me why I wanted you to help me,” Osamu says, eager eyes staring straight into Suna’s. One hand still rests gently on Suna’s chest, right over his heart. Suna wonders if Osamu can feel the way his pulse trips over itself every time Osamu looks at him like that. 

Suna shakes his head, but the smile still hasn’t left his face. “Why did you keep bothering me to help you with every little thing?” he asks, a laugh drawing in on the edges of his words. 

Osamu’s expression softens, just a touch, and Suna feels his breath catch in his throat. 

“Maybe I was hoping that eventually, something like this would happen,” Osamu says, laughing a little, at himself maybe, or at the utter ridiculousness of whatever dumb dance they’ve been caught up in for however long. Months, maybe, or years. 

Osamu’s grinning, his eyes crinkling around the corners, and Suna feels a little like his chest could burst at any moment. It’s a feeling he knows well, after so many years, but it doesn’t feel quite so much like drowning anymore. Suna pokes Osamu’s cheek where the little dimple is pressing into his cheek again.

“Sap,” he says, and then brings both hands up to cradle Osamu’s face, fingertips running along the line of his jaw, and kisses him again, and again, and again, if for no other reason than because he finally can.

**Author's Note:**

> I am here once again unable to figure out how to end my fic properly lmao sorry if the ending is a bit abrupt. this is about as far as my brain could get with this one adlkfgjldf
> 
> thank you so so much for reading! as always, comments/kudos are so very appreciated!
> 
> come find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/kura_ryous) or [tumblr](https://youichi-kuramochi.tumblr.com/) if u like for more yelling about these two!


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